Summer jobs for Detroit teenagers that do more than cut a check.

The branch has run BRIDGES since 2010. I took it over in 2019 and have run it every summer since. From 2021 on, the design, the creative direction and the execution have been mine. It does not pay teenagers for clocking hours. It pays them for hitting goals, so the work actually carries weight and they learn what it feels like to earn against a target.

Inside it I built a money lesson called Life Be Lifing, named for what the kids say when the cash runs out before the month does. At the end, every single one of them stands up and speaks. One fifteen-year-old said it better than any brochure could: "I don't have to wait until I'm grown to work toward my goals." I did not write that line. She did. It is on the flyer now.

The proof it works is that they come back. Some of the same faces show up three and four summers running. One recent summer we took 154 applications down to 40 interviews and placed 18, with ten-plus partners behind it, from Comerica and DTE to Wayne State.